Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 04:50:42 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com> To: Jack Rusher <jar@integratus.com> Cc: freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: SANs, disks, & devfs Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10007240442030.55035-100000@beppo.feral.com> In-Reply-To: <397A5DB9.846B905@integratus.com>
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> > Thoughts? > > If something is going to be modified to understand this, I would > like it to be vinum. Most of my uses for FCAL attached storage > involve some form of volume management. So does this mean you want to see the WWN/VPD info smarts in vinum? I think that vinum is already good, like VxVM also, in that once you label a disk (i.e., borg it into vinum), it's boot-time to boot-time address becomes can become less relevant. However, with all due respect to Greg, I want a solution that doesn't require vinum. > > This approach does, of course, bring up the notion of a /devfs > directory that contains the real disk information and a set of links > in /dev (or /dev/dsk) that map the common names to the right > devices. One of the big wins of using links to do this is that > moving the disks around won't change where they appear in the > /dev/da[0..N] namespace. > > Solaris style boot -r, anyone? No, no, no. A 1000 times no. I have 30 Megabytes of mail from my time at Sun in death matches over this back in 1991 that easily match the vitriol of the current Linux IDE/ATA flamewar meltdown. The whole /dev/dsk/XXX goop was/is a complete disaster in that it half-assed mushes together some bogus fixed name and address semantics into a symlink to try and give you some location info in the 'friendly' name (as opposed to the completely unambiguous physical pathname of the 'all-singing, all-dancing' devgs that Sun hasn't delivered yet but you currently get *something* of in SOlaris). I think that the constancy of the /dev/daX namespace is relevant only as long as that is the name in /etc/fstab. Presumably the grand plans of Poul for devfs will give one the same as the 'all-singing, all-dancing' devfs, but I have no idea when that will show up as a usable entity. -matt To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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